Does your biology influence your vote?

The intricate connections between genetics, psychological make-up and whether you swing to the left or right at elections are starting to be unravelled

By Sarah Estes and Jesse Graham

JEFFREY FLAKE is an easy man to stereotype&colon; a Republican congressman from Arizona, a former Mormon missionary and a staunch conservative. But even for somebody with his political credentials, the bill he proposed in May was a brazen move. Flake called for a billion-dollar cut in the budget of the National Science Foundation (NSF), instantly turning him into a hated figure among US scientists and liberals, a personification of “the Republican war on science”.

Thankfully, Flake’s amendment failed. But he was back the next day with another one, this time proposing the NSF be banned from funding political science. This, the amendment said, would ensure that taxpayer dollars were not being wasted on a “meritless program”. This time the amendment passed, by 218 votes to 208. All but five of the votes in favour came from Republicans.

In an era of tight budgets, all spending decisions are de facto questions of political and moral priorities. But the venomous tone of Flake’s amendment suggests that something more was in play. What did the Republicans have against political science, a discipline that Flake himself holds a graduate degree in?

It turned out they were not gunning for the whole field but just a small, controversial, area – investigations into the biological roots of political ideology. It might be tempting to dismiss this as yet more evidence of the US right divorcing itself from scientific reality, as has happened in debates over evolution and climate change. But there’s more to it than that. This time, it’s personal.

Research on the biological roots of ideology first appeared in the 1950s as the world grappled with ...

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